TWO men have denied being part of a gang of drug traffickers who unsuccessfully tried to smuggle £26.5 million of cocaine through Watchet Marina.

Three of the gang, who were caught red-handed when National Crime Agency officers made an early hours swoop on the marina in July, have already been jailed.

A fourth man, Albanian national Melios Delvina, aged 38, was due to be sentenced this week in Taunton Crown Court.

Colin Benson, aged 59, and Joshua Rose, aged 38, both from Longton, near Preston, Lancashire, were not arrested by National Crime Agency officers investigating the gang until early November.

They were charged with importing class A drugs when they first appeared in Taunton Magistrates’ Court and were remanded in custody.

On Friday (December 5), they appeared by video link before Judge Paul Cook in Taunton Crown Court and both entered not guilty pleas.

Judge Cook remanded both men in custody and fixed a trial date for April 13 next year, with a further case management hearing to be held on March 6.

Delvina initially denied his involvement, claiming he was unemployed and had taken work unloading items from a boat into a van without knowing about the cocaine, but eventually admitted his guilt a week later.

His three colleagues, Raymond and Craig Nuttall, aged 47 and 51, respectively, and Greek national Anestis Tsepa, aged 24, were sentenced to prison terms of between 11 and 16 years.

The gang had taken a rigid hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) to the marina and then used it to go out into the Bristol Channel to collect parcels of cocaine dropped from a passing ship in an operation known as an ‘at-sea drop off’, where a larger vessel, or mother ship, drops illegal drugs into the water for collection by a smaller boat.